Christiansen, Thor

Thor Nis Christiansen was born on December 28, 1957 in the territory of the state of Denmark. In 1963, his family emigrated to the United States, where he settled in the state of California in a small town called Solvang , which has the unofficial status of “The Danish Capital of the United States” and is mainly populated by emigrants from Denmark. Thor's father, Nis Christiansen, successfully went into business in the mid-1960s and opened a restaurant, thanks to which the family did not experience financial difficulties and Thor Christiansen's childhood passed in a socially prosperous environment ^[1] . Kristiansen attended Santa Ynez High School, where he excelled in exemplary behavior and good mental abilities. He graduated with honors from the 10th grade, but in 11th grade he unexpectedly dropped out of school, left his parents' home and got a job as an operator at a gas station ^[2] .

Since mid-1976, Critisansen began visiting the Isla Vista campus, where students at the University of California, Santa Barbara lived, to meet girls. After that, a series of disappearances of students took place in the city, the bodies of which were subsequently found in the vicinity of Santa Barbara County. As a rule, Christiansen chose girls who hitchhiked or girls involved in prostitution as his victims. So on November 20, 1976, 21-year-old student Jacqueline Ann Rook went missing. Kristiansen picked up a hitchhiker student near Isla Vista, shot her with a 28-caliber pistol, then had sex with her corpse and made various other post-mortal manipulations with her body. The body of Jacqueline Rook was found only on January 20, 1977, in one of the canyons of Santa Barbara County ^[3] . On December 6, 1976, 19-year-old Mary Ann Sarris went missing ^[4] . Like the previous victim, Christiansen met Sarris while she hitchhiked. Sarris’s body was found only on May 22, 1977 ^[5] . On January 18, 1977, Thor Christiansen kidnapped 21-year-old student Patricia Laney who, on the day of her disappearance, was putting up posters in public places about the disappearance of the first two victims of Christiansen. The killer, having abducted the girl, took her outside the city where he beat him, shot her with a pistol and subsequently performed sexual manipulations on the corpse. Laney's body was discovered the next day in one of the canyons ^[6] . After the bodies of the victims were discovered, a moral panic broke out in the student city, as a result of which Christiansen left Santa Barbara County and soon moved from California to Oregon, where he lived for several months and lost weight, after which he returned to Santa Barbara County. There he returned to school, which he graduated in 1979, rented apartments in the city of Goletta, began to cohabit with a girl, and went to college. On April 18, 1979, Christiansen put 21-year-old hitchhiker Lydia Preston into his car in West Hollywood. After a brief conversation, Thor Christiansen tried to kill the girl - by shooting her in the head, but the girl not only lost consciousness from a serious gunshot wound, but also managed to jump out of the killer’s car. Preston subsequently survived and gave the police a description of Thor. ^[7]

Thor Christiansen was arrested on July 11, 1979, after being identified by a surviving victim, Lydia Preston, in one of the bars in West Hollywood. After the arrest, Christiansen’s house and car were ransacked, during which a 22nd caliber revolver was found. During the ballistic examination, it was found that Jacqueline Rook, Merry Sarriz and Patricia Laney were shot from this weapon, on the basis of which on July 27, 1979, Christiansen was charged with 3 murders and an attack on Lydia Preston ^[8] . ^[9] .

The trial of Thor Christiansen began in the early 1980s. Kristiansen agreed to cooperate with the investigation and testified for each episode in exchange for the abolition of the death penalty for himself. He described in detail the murders he committed and stated that sexual intercourse with corpses had been his obsessive fantasies from his school years for no apparent reason. In addition to the murders he was charged with, Thor Christiansen also frankly confessed to the murder of the 21st Laura Sue Benjamin, which he committed on May 23, 1979. In June 1980, Christiansen was convicted on all counts and sentenced to life imprisonment ^[10] .

Following the conviction, Thor Nis Christiansen was escorted to serve his sentence in the Folsom State Prison High Security Prison. On March 30, 1981, during a walk, Christiansen was attacked by another prisoner and was killed, having received 17 stab wounds. The true motives of the murder and the identity of the killer have not been established ^[11] .